ABQ police chief racks up major overtime pay…again

Dennis Domrzalski does great old-school reporting. He likes to dig into the data and figure out why New Mexico government is so bloated and inefficient. Much like the Rio Grande Foundation. His latest report here explores the massive overtime pay being given to APD spokesman Simon Drobik.

According to the report Drobik made $82,371 in first four months of this year and is on track to make $247K for year. This is not a new problem as Drobik has been paid massive overtime over the span of the last decade. And, in 2019 the Police Oversight Board called for Drobik’s dismissal due to the overtime situation.

The 2019 “report emphasizes that there was no evidence of criminal activity, it did find that throughout 2018 Drobik violated policies more than 50 times by getting paid simultaneously for being on call as a spokesman and working the ‘chief’s overtime’ at local businesses..”

It is hard to see why the City, through two administrations, would want to continue wasting that kind of money on overtime pay, especially given the looming challenges of recovering from the COVID 19 shutdown.